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AFTER SOME TIME BE PAST. 



SPEECH 




HON. C. L, VALLANDIGHAM, OF OHIO, 

ON EXECUTIVE USURPATION: 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JULY 10, 1861. 



Mr. VALLANDIGHAM said: 

Mr. Chairman: In the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States, which the other day we swore to sup- 
port, and by the authority of which we are here 
assembled now, it is written: 

" All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in 
a Congress of the United States." 

It is further written also that the Congress to 
which all legislative powers granted are thus com- 
mitted — 

'• Shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or 
of the press." 

And it is yet further written, in protection of 
Senators and Representatives in that freedom of 
debate here .without which there can be no liberty, 
that— 

" For any speech or debate in either House they shall not 
be questioned in any other place." 

Holding up the shield of the Constitution, and 
standing here in the place and with the manhood 
of a Representative of the people, I propose to 
myself, to-day, the ancient freedom of speech 
used within these walls; though with somewhat 
more, I trust, of decency and discretion than have 
sometimes been exhibited here. Sir, I do not 
propose to discuss the direct question of this 
civil war in which we are engaged. Its present 
prosecution is a foregone conclusion; and a wise 
man never wastes his strength on a fruitless 
enterprise. My position shall at present, for the 
most part, be indicated by my votes, and by the 
resolutions and motions which I may submit. 
But there are many questions incident to the war 
and to its prosecution, about which I have some- 
what to say now. 

Mr. Chairman, the President, in the message 
before us, demands the extraordinary loan of 
$400,000,000 — an amount nearly ten times greater 
than the entire public debt, State and Federal, at 
the close of the Revolution in 1783, and four times 
as much as the total expenditures during the three 
years' war with Great Britain, in 1812. 

Sir, that same Constitution which I again hold 
up, and to which I give my whole heart and my 



utmost loyalty, commits to Congress alone the 
power to borrow money and to fix the purposes 
to which it shall be applied, and expressly limits 
Army appropriations to the term of two years. 
Each Senator and Representative, therefore, must 
judge for himself, upon his conscience and his 
oath, and before God and the country, of the jus- 
tice and wisdom and policy of the President's 
demand; and whenever this House shall have 
become but a mere office wherein to register the 
decrees of the Executive, it will be high time to 
abolish it. But I have a right, I believe, sir, to 
say that, however gentlemen upon this side of 
the Chamber may differ finally as to the war, we 
are yet firmly and inexorably united in one thing 
at least, and that is in the determination that our 
own rights and dignities and privileges, as the 
Representatives of the people, shall be maintained 
in their spirit and to the very letter. And be this 
as it may, I do know that there are some here 
present who are resolved to assert and to exercise 
these rights, with becoming decency and modera- 
tion certainly, but at the same time fully, freely, 
and at every haiard. 

Sir, it is an aWietrt~nTrri~ w/rrr'-pr & r tiic ^uwir^ 
English Commons, to precede all vo? But Im- 
plies by an inquiry into abuses and giicere, C es, 
and especially into any infractions of the clU'stitu- 
tion and the laws by the Executive. Let us follow 
this safe practice. We are now in Committee 
of the Whole on the state of the Union; and in the 
exercise of my right and my duty as a Repre- 
sentative, and availing myself of the latitude of 
debate allowed here, I propose to consider the 
i present state of the Union, and supply also 
) some few of the many omissions of the Presi- 
dent in the message before us. Sir, he has un- 
dertaken to give us information of the state of the 
Union, as the Constitution requires him to do; 
and it was his duty, as an honest Executive, to 
make that information full, impartial, and com- 
plete, instead of spreading before us a labored 
and lawyerly vindication of his own course of 
policy — a policy which has precipitated us into a 
terrible and bloody revolution. He admits the 



tA V 



fact; he admits that, to-day, we are in the midst 
of a general civil war, not now a mere petty 
insurrection, to be suppressed in twenty days by 
a proclamation and a posse comitalus of three 
months' militia. 

Sir, it has been the misfortune of the President 
from the beginning, that he has totally and wholly 
underestimated the magnitude and character of the 
Revolution with which he had to deal, or surely 
he never would have ventured upon the wicked 
and hazardous experiment of calling thirty mil- 
lions of people to arms among themselves, with- 
out the counsel and authority of Congress. But 
when at last he found himself hemmed in by 
the revolution, and this city in danger, as he 
declares, and waked up thus, as the proclamation 
of the 15th of April proves him to have waked 
up, to the reality and significance of the move- 
ment, why did he not forthwith assemble Con- 
gress, and throw himself upon the wisdom and 
patriotism of the representatives of the States and 
of the people, instead of usurping powers which 
the Constitution has expressly conferred upon us? 
ay, sir, and powers which Congress had but a 
little while before, repeatedly and emphatically 
refused to exercise, or to permit him to exercise ? 
But 1 shall recur to this point again. 

Sir, the President, in this message, has under- 
taken also to give us a summary of the causes 
which have led to the present revolution. He 
has made out a case — he might, in my judgment, 
have made out a much stronger case — against the 
secessionists and disunionists of the South. All 
this, sir, is very well as far as it goes. But the 
President does not go back far enough, nor in the 
right direction. He forgets the still stronger case 
against the abolitionists and disunionists of the 
North and West. He omits to tell us that seces- 
sion and disunion had a New England origin, and 
began in Massachusetts in 1804 at the time of the 
Louisiana purchase; were revived by the Hart- 
ford convention in 1814, and culminated, during 
the war with Great Britain, in sending commis- 
sioners to Washington to settle the terms for a 
peaceable separation of New England from the 
other States of the Union. He forgets to remind 
us and the country, that this present revolution 
began forty years ago, in the vehement, persistent, 
offensive, most irritating and unprovoked agita- 
tion of tlir ti »vk.ry question in the North and 
\\ - the tifile of the Missouri controversy, 

wit\ e short intervals, down to the present 

hour*, jir, if his statement of the case be the 
whole truth and wholly correct, then the Demo- 
cratic party and every member of it, and the Whig 
party , too, and its predecessors, have been guilty 
for sixty years of an unjust, unconstitutional, and 
most wicked policy in administering the affairs of 
the Government. 

But, sir, the President ignores totally the vio- 
lent and long-continued denunciation of slavery 
and slaveholders, and especially since 1835 — I 
appeal to Jackson's message for the date and 
proof — until at last a political nnti-slavery organ- 
ization was formed in the North and West, which 
continued to gain strength year after year, till at 
length it had destroyed and usurped the place of 
the Whig party, and finally obtained control of 
every free State in the Union, and elected himself, 
through free-State votes alone, to the Presidency 
of the United States. He chooses to pass over 



the fact that the party to which he thus owes his* 
place and his present power of mischief, is wholly 
and totally a sectional organization; and as such 
condemned by Washington, by Jefferson, by 
Jackson, Webster, and Clay, and by all the found- 
ers and preservers of the Republic, and utterly 
inconsistent with the principles, or with the peace, 
the stability or the existence even, of our Federal' 
system. Sir, there never was an hour, from the 
organization of this sectional party, when it was 
not predicted by the wisest men and truest pa- 
triots, and when it ought not to have been known 
by every intelligent man in the country, that it 
must sooner or later precipitate a revolution and 
the dissolution of the Union. The President 
forgets already that, on- the 4th of March, he de- 
clared that the platform of that party was "a law 
unto him," by which he meant to be governed 
in his administration; and yet that platform an- 
nounced that whereas there were two separate 
and distinct kinds of labor and forms of civiliza- 
tion in the two different sections of the Union, 
yet that the entire national domain, belonging in 
common to all the States, should be taken, pos- 
sessed, and held by one section alone, and con- 
secrated to that kind of labor and form of civili- 
zation alone which prevailed in that section which 
by mere numerical superiority, had chosen the 
President, and now has, and for some years past 
has had, a majority in the Senate, as from the 
beginning of the Government it had also in the 
House. He omits, too, to tell the country and 
the world — for he speaks, and we all speak now, 
to the world and to posterity — that he himself and 
his prime minister, the Secretary of State, de- 
clared three years ago, and have maintained ever 
since, that there was an "irrepressible conflict" 
between the two sections of this Union; that the 
Union could not endure part slave and part free; 
and that the whole power and influence of the 
Federal Government must henceforth be exerted 
to circumscribe and hem in slavery within its ex- 
isting limits. 

And now, sir, how comes it. that the President 
has forgotten to remind us, also, that when the 
party thus committed to the principle of deadly 
hate and hostility to the slave institutions of the 
South, and the men who had proclaimed the doc- 
trine of the irrepressible conflict, and who, in the 
dilemma or alternative of this conflict, were re- 
solved that " the cotton and rice fields of South 
Carolina, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana, 
should ultimately be tilled by free labor," had ob- 
tained power and place in the common Govern- 
ment of the States, the South, except one State, 
chose first to demand solemn constitutional guar- 
antees for protection against the abuse of the tre- 
mendous power and patronage and influence of 
the Federal Government, for the purpose of se- 
curing the great end of the sectional conflict, be- 
fore resorting to secession or revolution at all? 
Did he not know — how could he be ignorant — that 
at the last session of Congress, every substantive 
proposition for adjustment and compromise, ex- 
cept that offered by the gentleman from Illinois, 
[Mr. Kellogg] — and we all know how it was 
received — came from the South? Stop a moment, 
and let us sec* 

The committee of thirty-three was moved for 
in this House by a gentleman from Virginia, the 
second day of the session, and received the vote 



of every southern Representative present, except 
only the members from South Carolina, who de- 
clined to vote. In the Senate, the committee of thir- 
teen was proposed by a Senator from Kentucky, 
[Mr. Powell,] and received the silent acquiescence 
of every southern Senator present. The Crittenden 
• propositions, too, were submitted also by another 
Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Crittenden,] now 
■a member of this House; a man venerable for his 
years, loved for his virtues, distinguished for his 
services, honored for his patriotism; for four-and- 
forty years a Senator, or in other public office; 
devoted from the first hour of his manhood to the 
Union of these States; and who, though he him- 
self proved his courage fifty years ago, upon the 
battle-field against the foreign enemies of his coun- 
try, is now, thank God, still for compromise at 
home, to-day. Fortunate in a long and well spent 
life of public service and private worth, he is 
unfortunate only that he has survived a Union 
and, I fear, a Constitution younger than him- 
self. 

The Border State propositions also were pro- 
jected by a gentleman from Maryland, not now a 
member of this House, and presented by a gen- 
tleman from Tennessee, (Mr. Etheiidge,) now 
the Clerk of this House. And yet all these prop- 
ositions, coming thus from the South, were sev- 
erally and repeatedly rejected by the almost uni- 
ted vote of the Republican party in the Senate and 
the House. The Crittenden propositions, with 
which Mr. Davis, now President of the Confed- 
erate States, and Mr. Toombs, his secretary of 
State, both declared in the Senate that they would 
be satisfied, and for which every southern Sena- 
tor and Representative voted, never, on any oc- 
casion, received one solitary vote from the Re- 
publican party in either House. 

The Adams or Corwin amendment, so-called, 
reported from the committee of thirty-three, and 
the only substantive amendment proposed from 
the Republican side, was but a bare promise that 
Congress should never be authorized to do what 
no sane man ever believed Congress would at- 
tempt to do — abolish slavery in the States where it 
exists; and yet even this proposition, moderate 
as it was, and for which every southern member 
present voted, except one, was carried through 
this House by but one majority, after long and 
tedious delay, and with the utmost difficulty — 
sixty-five Republican members, with the resolute 
and determined gentleman from Pennsylvania 
[Mr. Hickman] at their head , having voted against 
it and fought against it to the very last. 

And not this only, but, as a part of the history 
of the last session, let me remind you that bills 
were introduced into this House proposing to 
abolish and close up certain southern ports of 
entry; to authorize the President to blockade the 
southern coast; and to call out the militia and 
accept, the services of volunteers, not for three 
years merely, but without any limit as to either 
numbers or time, for- the very purpose of enforcing 
the laws, collecting the revenue, and protecting the 
public property; and were pressed vehemently and 
earnestly in this House prior to the arrival of the 
President in this. city, and were then, though seven 
States had seceded and set up a government of 
their own, voted down, postponed, thrust aside, 
or in some other way disposed of, sometimes by 
large majorities in this House, till at last Congress 



adjourned without any action at all. Peace then, 
seemed to be the policy of all parties. 

Thus, sir, the case stood at twelve o'clock on 
on the 4th of March last, when, from the eastern 
portico of this Capitol, and in the presence of 
twenty thousand of his countrymen, but envel- 
oped in a cloud of soldiery which no other Amer- 
ican President ever saw, Abraham Lincoln took 
the oath of office to support the Constitution, and 
delivered his inaugural — a message, I regret to 
say, not written in the direct and straightforward 
language which becomes an American President 
and an American statesman, and which was ex- 
pected from the plain, blunt, honest man of the 
Northwest, but with the forked tongue and 
crooked counsel of the New York politician, 
leaving thirty millions of people in doubt whether 
it meant peace or war. But whatever may have 
been the secret purpose and meaning of the in- 
augural, practically for six weeks the policy of 
peace prevailed; and they were weeks of happi- 
ness to the patriot, and prosperity to the country. 
Business revived; trade returned; commerce flour- 
ished. Never was there a fairer prospect before 
any people. Secession in the past languished, 
and was spiritless and harmless; secession in the 
future was arrested, and perished. By over- 
whelming majorities, Virginia, Kentucky, North 
Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri all declared 
for the old Union, and every heart beat high with, 
hope that in due course of time, and through faith 
and patience and peace, and by ultimate_and ade- 
equate compromise, every State would be restored 
to it. It is true, indeed, sir, that the Republican 
party, with great unanimity and great earnest- 
ness and determination, had resolved against all 
conciliation and compromise. But, on the other 
hand, the whole Democratic party, and the whole 
Constitutional Union party, were equally resolved 
that there should be no civil war upon any pre- 
text; and both sides prepared for an appeal to 
that great and final arbiter of all disputes in 
free country — the people. 

Sir, I do not propose to inquire now whether 
the President and his Cabinet were sincere and in 
earnest, and meant really to persevere to the end 
in the policy of peace; or whether from the first 
they meant civil wac, and only waited to gain 
time till they were fairly seated in power, and 
had disposed, too, of that prodigious horde of 
spoilsmen and office seekers, "wlweTt- jafflC Jown - a ^— ' 
the first like an avalanche upon them ? But I do. 
know that the people believed them sincere, and 
cordially ratified and approved of the policy of 
peace; not as they subsequently responded to- 
the policy of war, in a whirlwind of passion 
and madness, but calmly and soberly, and as 
the result of their deliberate and most solemn 
judgment; and believing that civil war was ab- 
solute and eternal disunion, while secession was 
but partial and temporary, they cordially in- 
dorsed also the proposed evacuation of Sumter 
and the other forts and public property within 
the seceded .States. Nor, sir, will I .stop now 
to explore the several causes which either led to 
a change in the apparent policy or an early devel- 
opment of the original and real purposes of the 
Administration. But there are two which I can- 
not pass by. And the first of these was party ne- 
cessity, or the clamor of politicians, and espe- 
cially of certain wicked , reckless, and unprincipled. 



conductors of a partisan press. The peace policy- 
was crushing out the Republican party. Under 
that policy, sir, it was melting away like snow 
before the sun. The general elections in Rhode 
Island and Connecticut, and municipal elections 
in New York and in the western States, gave 
abundant evidence that the people were resolved 
upon the most ample and satisfactory constitu- 
tional guarantees to the South as the price of a 
restoration of Union. And then it was, sir, that 
the long and agonizing howl of defeated and dis- 
appointed politicians came up before the Admin- 
istration. The newspaper press teemed with 
appeals and threats to the President. The mails 
groaned under the weight of letters demanding a 
change of policy; while a secret conclave of the 
Governors of Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, 
and other States, assembled here, promised men 
and money to support the President in the irre- 
pressible conflict which they now invoked. And 
thus it was, sir, that the necessities of a party in 
the pangs of dissolution, in the very hour and 
article of death, demanding vigorous measures, 
which could result in nothing but civil war, re- 
newed secession, and absolute and eternal dis- 
union, were preferred and hearkened to before the 
peace and harmony and prosperity of the whole 
country. 

But there was another and yet stronger im- 
pelling cause without which this horrid calamity 
of civil war might have been postponed, and, per- 
haps, finally averted. One of the last and worst 
acts of a Congress, which, born in bitterness and 
nurtured in convulsion, literally did those things 
which it ought not to have done, and left undone 
those things which it ought to have done, was the 
passage of an obscure, ill-considered, ill-digested, 
and unstatesmanlike high protective tariff act, 
commonly known as "the Morrill tariff." 
Just about the same time, too, the Confederate 
Congress at Montgomery adopted our old tariff 
of 1857, which we had rejected to make way for 
the Morrill act, fixing their rate of duties at five, 
fifteen, and twenty per cent, lower than ours. 
The result was as inevitable as the laws of trade 
are inexorable. Trade and commerce — and espe- 
cially the trade and commerce of the West — be- 
gan to look to the South. Turned out of their 
natural course years ago, by the canals and rail- 
roads of Pennsylvania and New York, and di- 
\V ; nN'i"eusfwat'd at ffKeavy loss to the West, they 
threatened now to resume their ancient and ac- 
customed channels — the water-courses — the Ohio 
and the Mississippi. And political association 
and union, it was well known, must soon follow 
the direction of trade and interest. The city of 
New York, the great commercial emporium of 
the Union, and the Northwest, the chief granary 
of the Union, began to clamor now loudly for a 
repeal ofthepcrnieiousand ruinous tariff. Threat- 
ened thus with the loss of both political power 
and wealth, or the repeal of the tariff, and at last 
of both, New England — and Pennsylvania, too, 
the land ofPenn, cradled in peace — demanded now 
coercion and civil war, with all its horrors, as the 
price of preserving either from destruction. Ay, 
sir, Pennsylvania, the great keystone of the arch 
of the Union, was willing to lay the whole weight 
of her iron upon ihat sacred arch, and crush it 
beneath the load. Tin: .subjugation of the South — 
ay, sir, the subjvgation of the South ! I am not 



talking to children or fools; for there is not a 
man in this House fit to be a Representative here 
who does not know that the South cannot be 
forced to yield obedience to your laws and author- 
ity again until you have conquered and subjugated 
her — the subjugation of the South, and the clos- 
ing up of her ports, first by force, in war, and 
afterwards by tariff laws, in peace, was deliber- 
ately resolved upon by the East. And, sir, when 
once this policy was begun, these self-same mo- 
tives of waning commerce and threatened loss of 
trade impelled the great city of New York, and her 
merchants and her politicians and her press, with 
here and there an honorable exception, to place 
herself in the very front rank among the wor- 
shipers of Moloch. Much, indeed, of that out- 
burst and uprising in the North, which followed 
the proclamation of the 15th of April, as well, per- 
haps, as the proclamation itself, was called forth, 
not so much by the fall of Sumter — an event long 
anticipated — as by the notion that the ; ' insurrec- 
tion," as it was called, might be crushed out in a 
few weeks, if not by the display, certainly, at 
least, by the presence of an overwhelming force. 

These, sir, were the chief causes which, along 
with others, led to a change in the policy of the 
Administration, and, instead of peace, forced us 
headlong into civil war, with all its accumulated 
horrors. 

But whatever may have been the causes or the 
motives of the act, it is certain that there was a 
change in the policy which the Administration 
meant to adopt, or which at least they led the 
country to believe they intended to pursue. I will 
not venture now to assert, what may yet someday 
be made to appear, that the subsequent acts of the 
Administration, and its enormous and persistent 
infractions of the Constitution, its high-handed 
usurpations of power, formed any part of a delib- 
erate conspiracy to overthrow the present form 
of Federal republican government, and to estab- 
lish a strong centralized Government in its stead. 
No, sir; whatever their purposes now, I rather 
think that, in the beginning, they rushed heed- 
lessly and headlong into the gulf, believing that, 
as the seat of war was then far distant and diffi- 
cult of access, the display of vigor in reinforcing 
Sumter and Pickens, and in calling out seventy- 
five thousand militia upon the firing of the first 
gun, and above all, in that exceedingly happy 
and original conceit of commanding the insurgent 
States to " disperse in twenty days," would not, 
on the one hand, precipitate a crisis, while, upon 
the other, it would satisfy its own violent parti- 
sans, and thus revive and restore the falling for- 
tunes of the Republican party. 

I can hardly conceive, sir, that the President 
and his advisers could be guilty of the exceeding 
folly of expecting to carry on a general civil war 
by a mere posse comitaius of three-months militia. 
It may be, indeed, that, with wicked and most 
desperate cunning, the President meant all this as 
a mere entering wedge to that which was to rive 
the oak asunder; or possibly as a test, to learn 
the publicsentimentof the North and West. But, 
however that may be, the rapid secession and 
movements of Virginia, North Carolina, Ark- 
ansas, and Tennessee, taking with them, as 1 have 
said elsewhere, four millions and a half of people, 
immense wealth, inexhaustible resources, five 
hundred thousand fighting men, and the graves of 



Washington and Jackson, and bringing up too, in 
one single day, the frontier from the Gulf to the 
Ohio and the Potomac, together with the aban- 
donment by the one side, and the occupation by 
the other, of Harper's Ferry and the Norfolk 
navy-yard; and the fierce gust and whirlwind of 
passion iA the North, compelled either a sudden 
waking up of the President and his advisers to 
the frightful significancy of the act which they 
had committed in heedlessly breaking the vase 
which imprisoned the slumbering demon of civil 
war, or else a premature but most rapid develop- 
ment of the daring plot to foster and promote 
secession, and then to set up a new and strong 
form of Government in the States which might 
remain in the Union. 

But whatever may have been the purpose, I 
assert here to-day, as a Representative, that every 
principal act of the Administration since, has been 
a glaring usurpation of power, and a palpable and 
dangerous violation of tljat very Constitution 
which this civil war is professedly waged to sup- 
port. Sir, I pass by the proclamation of the 15th 
of April, summoning the militia — not to defend 
this capital; there is not a word about the capital 
in the proclamation, and there was then no pos- 
sible danger to it from any quarter; but to retake 
and occupy forts and property a thousand miles 
off — summoning, I say, the militia to suppress 
the so-called insurrection. I do not believe 
indeed, and no man believed in February last, 
when Mr. Stanton, of Ohio, introduced his bill to 
enlarge the act of 1795, that that act ever contem- 
plated the case of a general revolution, and of 
resistance by an organized Government. But 
no matter. The militia thus called out, with a 
shadow, at least, of authority, and for a period 
extending one month beyond the assembling of, 
Congress, were amply sufficient to protect the cap- 
ital against any force which was then likely to be 
sent against it — and the event has proved it — and 
ample enough also to suppress the outbreak in 
Maryland . Every other principal act of the Ad- 
ministration might well have been postponed, and 
ought to have been postponed, until the meeting 
of Congress; or, if the exigencies of the occasion 
demanded it, Congress should forthwith have 
been assembled. What if two or three States 
should not have been represented, although even 
this need not have happened; but better this, a 
thousand times, than that the Constitution should 
be repeatedly and flagrantly violated, and public 
liberty and private right trampled under foot. As 
for Harper's Ferry and the Norfolk navy-yard, 
they rather needed protection against the Admin- 
istration, by whose orders millions of property 
were wantonly destroyed, which was not in the 
slightest danger from any quarter, at the date of 
the proclamation. 

But, sir, Congress was not assembled at once, 
as Congress should have been, and the great ques- 
tion of civil war submitted to their deliberations. 
The representatives of the States and of the peo- 
ple were not allowed the slightest voice in this the 
most momentous question ever presented to any 
Government. The entire responsibility of the 
whole work was boldly assumed by the Exec- 
utive, and all the powers required for the purposes 
in hand were boldly usurped from either the States 
or the people, or from the legislative department; 
while the voice of the judiciary, that iast refuge 



and hope of liberty, was turned away from with 
contempt. 

Sir, the right of blockade — and I begin with 
it — is a belligerent right, incident to a state of 
war, and it cannot be exercised until war has 
been declared or recognized; and Congress alone 
can declare or recognize war. But Congress had 
not declared or recognized war. On the contrary, 
they had but a little while before expressly refused 
to declare it, or to arm the President with the 
power to make it. And thus the President, in 
declaring a blockade of certain ports in the States 
of the South, and in applying to it the rules gov- 
erningblockadesas between independentPowers, 
violated the Constitution. 

But if, on the other hand, he meant to deal with 
these States as still in the Union, and subject to 
Federal authority, then he usurped a power which 
belongs to Congress alone — the power to abolish 
and close up ports of entry; a power, too, which 
Congress had also but a few weeks before refused to 
exercise. And yet, without the repeal or abolition 
of ports of entry, any attempt by either Congress 
or the President to blockade these ports is a vio- 
lation of the spirit, if not of the letter, of that clause 
of the Constitution which declares that "no pref- 
erence shall be given by any regulation of com- 
merce or revenue to the ports of one State over 
those of another." 

Sir, upon this point I do not speak without the 
highest authority. In the very midst of the South 
Carolina nullification controversy, it was sug- 
gested that in the recess of Congress, and with- 
out a law to govern him, the President, Andrew 
Jackson, meant to send down a fleet to Charles- 
ton and blockade the port. But the bare sugges- 
tion called forth the indignant protest of Daniel 
Webster, himself the arch enemy of nullification, 
and whose brightest laurels were won in the three 
years' conflict in the Senate Chamber with its 
ablest champions. In an address, in October, 
1832, at Worcester, Massachusetts, to a National 
Republican convention — it was before the birth, 
or christening at least, of the Whig party — the 
great expounder of the Constitution said: 

" We are told, sir, that the President will immediately 
employ the military force, and at once blockade Charles 
ton ! A military remedy, a remedy by direct belligerent 
operation, has thus been suggested, and nothing else has 
been suggested, as the intended means ot" preserving the 
Union. Sir, there is rvrJittitrcrirowtA '\tiitfk **3&4hg£Bw4»*t> 
gestion is true. We cannot be altogether unmindful of the 
past, and therefore we cannot be altogether unapprehensive 
for the future. For one, sir, I raise my voice beforehand 
against the unauthorized employment of military power, 
and against superseding the authority of the Jaws, by an 
aimed force, under pretense of putting down nullification. 
The President has no authority to blockade Charleston." 

Jackson ! Jackson, sir ! the great Jackson ! did 
not dare to do it without authority of Congress; 
but our Jackson of to-day, the little Jackson at 
the other end of the avenue, and the mimic Jack- 
sons around him, do blockade, not only Claries- 
ton harbor, but the whole southern coast, three 
thousand miles in extent, by a single stroke of 
the pen. 

" The President has no authority to employ military force 
till he shall be duly required"— 

Mark the word: 

"required so to do by law and the civil authorities. His 
duty is to cause the laws to be executed. His duty is to 
support the civil authority' 1 — 



As in the Merryman case, forsooth; but I shall 
recur to that hereafter: 

"His duty is. If the laws be resisted, to employ the mil- 
itary force ol" tlic country. If necessary, tor their support 
and execution ; but to do allthis in compliance only with laiv 
and with decisions of the tribunals. If, by tiny ingenious 
devices, loose who resist the laws escape from (he reach 
of judicial authority, as it is now provided to be exercised, 
it is entirely competent to Congress to make sucli new pro- 
visions ;is the exigency of the case may demand." 

Treason , sir, rank treason , all this to-day. And 
yet, thirty years ago, it was true Union patriot- 
ism and sound constitutional law ! Sir, I prefer 
the wisdom and stern fidelity to principle of the 
fathers. 

Such was the voice of Webster, and such too, 
let me add, the voice, in his last great speech in 
the Senate, of the Douglas, whose death the land 
now mourns. 

Next after the blockade, sir, in the catalogue 
of daring executive usurpations, comes the proc- 
lamation of the 3d of May, and the orders of the 
War and Navy Departments in pursuance of it — 
a proclamation and usurpation which would have 
cost any English sovereign his head at anytime 
within the last two hundred years. Sir, the Con- 
stitution not only confines to Congress the right 
to declare war, butexpressly provides that " Con- 
gress (not the President) shall have power to 
raise and support armies;" and to " provide and 
maintain a navy." In pursuance of this authority, 
Congress, years ago, had fixed the number of offi- 
cers, and of the regiments, of the different kinds 
of service; and also the number of ships, officers, 
marines, and seamen which should compose the 
Navy. Not only that, but Congress has repeat- 
edly, within the lastfive years, refused toincrease 
the regular Army. More than that still: in Feb- 
ruary and March last, the House, upon several 
test votes, repeatedly and expressly refused to 
authorize the President to accept the service of 
volunteers for the very purpose of protecting the 
public property, enforcing the laws, and collect- 
ing the revenue. And yet the President, of his 
own mere will and authority, and without the 
shadow of right, has proceeded to increase, and 
has increased, the standing Army by twenty-five 
thousand men; the Navy by eighteen thousand; 
and has called for and accepted the services of 
forty regiments of volunteers for three years, num- 
:'.;-: •vo.tl.'ou?w J mi'.'. ( and making thus 
a grand army or military force, raised by execu- 
tive proclamation alone, without the sanction of 
Congress, without warrant of law, and in direct 
violation of the Constitution and of his oath of 
office, of eighty-five thousand soldiers enlisted for 
three and five years, and already in the field. And 
yi > the President DOW asks us to support the A rmy 
which he has thus raised; to ratify his usurpations 
by a law ex post facto, and thus to make ourselves 
parties to our own degradation, and to his infrac- 
tions of the Constitution. Meanwhile, however, 
he has taken good cure, not only to enlist the men, 
organize the regiments, and muster them into ser- 
rice,but to provide inadvanceforfc horde of for- 
lorn, wornout, and broken down politicians of his 
own party, by appointing, either by himself or 
through the Governors of the States, major gen- 
erals, brigadier generals, colonels, lieutenant i ol- 
onels, majors, captains, lieutenants, adjutants, 
quartermasters, and surgeons, without any limit 



asto numbers, and withoutsomuch as once saying 
to Congress — " By your leave, gentlemen." 

Beginning with this wide breach of the Consti- 
tution, this enormous usurpation of the most dan- 
gerous of all powers — the power of the sword — 
other infractions and assumptions were easy; and 
after public liberty, private right soon fall. The 
privacy of the telegraph was invaded in the search 
after treason and traitors; although it turns out, 
significantly enough, that the only victim, so far, 
is one of the appointees and especial pets of the 
Administration. The telegraphicdispatches, pre- 
served under every pledge of secrecy for the pro- 
tection and safety of the telegraph companies, were 
seized and carried away without search warrant, 
| without probable cause, without oath, and with- 
out description of the places to be searched or of 
the things to be seized, and in plain violation of 
the right of the people to be secure in their houses, 
persons, papers, and effects, against unreasonable 
searches and seizures. One step more, sir, will 
bring upon us search and seizure of the public 
mails; and finally, as in the worstdays of Eng- 
lish oppression — as in the times of the Russells 
and the Sydneys of English martyrdom — of the 
drawers and secretaries of the private citizen; 
though even then tyrants had the grace to look 
to the forms of the law, and the execution was 
judicial murder, not military slaughter. But who 
shall say that the future Tiberius of America shall 
have the modesty of his Roman predecessor, in 
extenuation of whose character it is written by 
the great historian, avertit occulos, jussitque scelera 
non spectavit. 

Sir, the rights of property having been thus 
wantonly violated, it needed but a little stretch 
of usurpation to invade the sanctity of the person; 
and a victim was not long wanting. A private 
citizen of Maryland, not subject to the rules and 
articles of war — not in a case arising in the land 
or naval forces, nor in the militia when in actual 
service — is seized in his own house, in the dead 
hour of night, not by any civil officer, nor upon 
any civil process, but by a band of armed sol- 
diers, under the verbal orders of a military chief, 
and is ruthlessly torn fronl his wife and his chil- 
dren, and hurried off to a fortress of the United 
States — and that fortress, as if in mockery, the 
very one over whose ramparts had floated that 
star-spangled banner immortalized in song by the 
patriot prisoner who, 

" By the dawn's early light,*' 
saw its folds gleaming amid the wreck of battle, 
and invoked the blessings of Heaven upon it, and 
prayed that it might longwave — 

" O'er the land ofthefrer anil the home of die brave. " 

And, sir, when the highest judicial officer of 
the land, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
upon whose shoulders, " when the judicial er- 
mine fell, it touched nothing notas spotless as it- 
self," the aged, the venerable, the gentle and pure 
minded Taney, who but a little while before had 
administered to the President the oath to support 
the Constitution and to execute the laws, issued, 
as by law it was his sworn duly to issue, the high 
prerogative writ of habeas corpus — that great writ 
of right, that main bulwark of personal liberty, 

commanding the body of the accused to be brought 
before him that justice ami right might be done 
by due course of law, and without denial or de- 



lay; the gates of the fortress, its cannon turned 
towards, and in plain sight of the city where the 
court sat, and frowning from the ramparts, were 
closed against the officer of the law, and the an- 
swer returned that the officer in command has, by 
the authority of the President, suspended the writ 
of habeas corpus. And thus it is, sir, that the 
accused has ever since been held a prisoner with- 
out due process of law; without bail; without 
presentment by a grand jury; without speedy 
or public trial by a petit jury of his own State 
or district, or any trial at all; without informa- 
tion of the nature and cause of the accusation; 
without being confronted with the witnesses 
against him; without compulsory process to ob- 
tain witnesses in his favor; and without the 
assistance of counsel for his defense. And this 
is our boasted American liberty ? And thus it is, 
too, sir, that here, here, in America, in the sev- 
enty-third year of the Republic, that great writ 
and security of personal freedom which it cost 
the patriots and freemen of England six hundred 
years of labor and toil and blood to extort and 
to hold fast from venal judges and tyrant kings; 
written in the great charter at Runnymede by the 
iron barons, who made the simple Latin and un- 
couth words of the times, nullus liber homo, in the 
language of Chatham, worth all the classics; re- 
covered and confirmed a hundred times afterwards, 
as often as violated and stolen away , and finally and 
firmly secured at last by the great act of Charles 
II, and transferred thence to our own Constitu- 
tion and laws, has been wantonly and ruthlessly 
trampled in the dust. Ay, sir, that great writ, 
bearing, by special command of Parliament, those 
other uncouth but magic words, per statutum tri- 
cessimo prhno Caroli secundi regis, which no Eng- 
lish judge, no English minister, no king or queen 
of England, dare disobey; that writ brought over 
by our fathers and cherished by them as a price- 
less inheritance of liberty, an American Presi- 
dent has contemptuously set at defiance. Nay, 
more, he has ordered his subordinate military 
chiefs to suspend it at their discretion ! And yet, 
after all this, he coolly comes before this House 
and the Senate and the country, and pleads that 
he is only preserving and protecting the Consti- 
tution; and demands and expects of this House 
.and of the Senate and the country their thanks 
for his usurpations; while outside of this Cap- 
itol, his myrmidons are clamoring for impeach- 
ment of the Chief Justice, as engaged in a con- 
spiracy to break down the Federal Government! 
Sir, however much necessity — the tyrant's 
plea — may be urged in extenuation of the usurp- 
ations and infractions of the President in regard 
to public liberty, there can be no such apology or 
defense for his invasions of private right. What 
overruling necessity required the violation of the 
sanctity of private property and private confi- 
dence? What great public danger demanded the 
arrest and imprisonment, without trial by com- 
mon law, of one single private citizen, for an act 
done weeks before, openly, and byauthority of his 
State? If guilty of treason, was not the judicial 
power ample enough and strong enough for 
his conviction and punishment? What, then, 
was needed in his ease, but the precedent under 
which other men, in other places, might be- 
come the victims of exeefcive suspicion and dis- 
pleasure? 



As to the pretense, sir, that the President has 
the constitutional right to suspend the writ of 
habeas corpus, I will not waste time in arguing 
it. The case is as plain as words can make it. 
It is a legislative power; it is found only in the 
legislative article; it belongs to Congress only 
to do it. Subordinate officers have disobeyed 
it; General Wilkinson disobeyed it, but he sent 
his prisoners on for judicial trial; General Jack- 
son disobeyed it, and was reprimanded by James 
Madison; but no President, no body but Con- 
gress, ever before assumed the right to suspend it. 
And, sir, that other pretense, of necessity , 1 repeat, 
cannot be allowed. It had no existence in fact. 
| The Constitution cannot be preserved by violating 
j it. It is an offense to the intelligence of this 
House and of the country, to pretend that all this, 
! and the other gross and multiplied infractions of 
the Constitution and usurpations of power were 
| done by the President and his advisers out of pure 
I love and devotion to the Constitution. But if so, 
sir, then they have but one step further to tak% 
and declare, in the language of Sir Boyle Roche 
I in the Irish House of Commons, that such is the 
j depth of their attachment to it, that they are pre- 
I pared to give up, not merely a part, but the whole 
of the Constitution , to preserve the remainder. And 
yet, if indeed this pretext of necessity be well 
founded, then let me say, that a cause which 
t demands the sacrifice of the Constitution and of the 
j dearest securities of property, liberty, and life, 
cannot be just; at least it is not worth the sac- 
! rifice. 

; Sir, I am obliged to pass by, for want of time, 
other grave and dangerous infractions and usurp- 
ations of the President since the fourth of March. 
! I only allude casually to the quartering of soldiers 
in private houses without the consent of the own- 
j ers, and without any manner having been pre- 
scribed by law; to the subversion in a part at least 
j of Maryland of her own State government and of 
the authorities under it: to the censorship over the 
telegraph, and the infringement repeatedly, in one 
or more of the States, of the right of the people to 
keep and to bear arms for their defense. But if all 
these things, I ask, have been done in the first two 
months after the commencement of this war, and 
by men not military chieftains and unused to 
arbitrary power, what may we not expect to see 
in three years, and by the successful heroes 
of the fight? Sir, the poTCe^-xuid- r ... Ht.s^J-t^,, 
I States and the people, and of their Representa- 
tives, have been usurped; the sanctity of the pri- 
! vate house and of private property has been in- 
ivaded; and the liberty of the person wantonly 
and wickedly stricken down; free speech, too, 
I has been repeatedly denied; and all this under the 
I plea of necessity. Sir, the right of petition will 
j follow next — nay, it has already been shaken; 
, the freedom of the press will soon fall after it; 
J and let me whisper in your ear, that there will be 
few to mourn over its loss, unless, indeed, its an- 
[ cient high and honorable character shall be res- 
cued and redeemed from its present reckless men- 
dacity and degradation. Freedom of religion will 
yield too, at last, amid the exultant shouts of 
millions, who have seen its holy temples defiled 
and its white robes of a former innocency trampled 
now under the polluting hoofs of an ambitious 
and faithless or fanatical clergy. Meantime 
national banks, bankrupt laws, a vast and perma- 



8 



011 933 322 



nent public debt, high tariffs, heavy direct tax- 
tion, enormous expenditure, gigantic and stu- 
pendous peculation, anarchy first and a strong 
government afterwards, no more State lines, no 
more State governments, and a consolidated mon- 
archy or vast centralized military despotism, must 
all follow in the history of the future, as in the 
history of the past they have, centuries ago, been 
written. Sir, I have said nothing, and have time 
to say nothing now, of the immense indebted- 
ness and the v;ist expenditures which have already 
accrued, nor of the folly and mismanagement of 
the war so far, nor of the atrocious and shame- 
less peculations and frauds which have disgraced 
it in the State governments and the Federal Gov- 
ernment from the beginning. The avenging hour 
for all these will come hereafter, and I pass them 
by now. 

I have finished now, Mr. Chairman, what I pro- 
posed to say at this time upon the message of the 
President. As to my own position in regard to 
this most unhappy civil war, I have only to say 
that I stand to-day just where I stood upon the 
fourth of March last; where the whole Democratic 
party, and the whole Constitutional Union party, 
and a vast majority, as I believe, of the people 
of the United States stood too. I am for peace, 
speedy, immediate, honorable peace, with all its 
blessings. Others may have changed: I have not. 
I question not their motives nor quarrel with their 
course. It is vain and futile for them to question 
or to quarrel with mine. My duty shall be dis- 
charged: calmly, firmly, quietly, and regardless 
of consequences. The approving voice of a con- 
science void of offense, and the approving judg- 
ment which shall follow "after some time be J 
past," these, God help me, are nyr trust and my j j 
support. 

Sir, I have spoken freely and fearlessly to-day, j 
as became an American Representative and an 
American citizen; one firmly resolved, come what 
may, not to lose his own constitutional liberties, 
nor to surrender his own constitutional rights in j 
the vain effort to impose these rights and liber- 
ties upon ten millions of unwilling people. I have j I 
spoken earnestly, too, but yet not as one unmind- j j 
ful of the solemnity of the scenes which surround 
US upon every side to-day. Sir, when the Con- j 
fthe United States assembled here on the 1 
3d ..f December, 18G0, just seven months ago, the 
of •■!>. t y-six Senators, rep 
resenting the thirty-three States of the Union, and 
this House of two hundred and thirty-seven mem- 1, 
hers— every State being present. It was a grand : 
and sol( inn Bpectacli ; the embassadors of three 
■At thirty sovereignties and of thirty-one million 
people, tne mightiest republic on earth, in general 
Congress as ■ mbled. In the Senate, too, and this 
House, were some of the ablest and most distin- 
guished Statesmen of the country; men whose 
names were familiar to the whole country — some 
of them destin <l to pass into history, The new 
wings of the Capitol had then but just recently been 
d, in all their gorgeous magnificence, and, 
> i liiindivil marines al the navy-yard, not 
within forty miles of Washington. 



Sir, the Congress of the United States meets 
here again to-day; but how changed the scene. 
Instead of thirty-four States, twenty-three only, 
one less than the number forty years ago, are 
here or in the other wing of the Capitol. Forty- 
six Senators and a hundred and seventy-three 
Representatives constitute the Congress of the 
now United States. And of these, eight Senators 
and twenty-four Representatives, from four States 
only, linger here yet as deputies from that great 
South which, from the beginning of the Govern- 
ment, contributed so much to mold its policy, to 
build up its greatness, and to control its destinies. 
All the other States of that South are gone. 
Twciity-two Senators and sixty-five Represent- 
atives no longer answer to their names. The va- 
cant scats are, indeed, still here; and the escutch- 
eons of their respective States look down now 
solemnly and sadly from these vaulted ceilings. 
But the Virginia of Washington and Henry and 
Madison, of Marshall and Jefferson, of Randolph 
and Monroe, the birth place of Clay, the mother 
ofstatesand of presidents; the Carohnas of Pinck- 
ney and Sumpter and Marion, of Calhoun and 
Macon; and Tennessee, the home and burial 
place of Jackson; and other States, too, once 
most loyal and true, are no longer here. The 
voices and the footsteps of the great dead of the 
past two ages of the Republic, linger still, it may 
be in echo, along the stately corridors of this 
Capitol; but their descendants from nearly one 
half of the States of the Republic will meet with 
us no more within these marble halls. But in 
the parks and lawns, and upon the broad avenues 
of this spacious city, seventy thousand soldiers 
have supplied their places; and the morning drum- 
beat from a score of encampments within sight of 
this beleaguered capital, give melancholy warning 
to the representatives of the States and of the peo- 
ple, that AMID ARMS LAWS ARE SILENT. 

Sir, some years hence, I would fain hope some 
months hence, if I dare, the present generation 
will demand to know the cause of all this; and 
some ages hereafter the grand and impartial tri- 
bunal of history will make solemn and diligent 
inquest of the authors of this terrible revolu- 
tion. 



APPENDIX. 

In reply to a question by Mr. Holman, of In- 
diana, in regard to supporting the Government, 
Mr. Vai.landjgiiam said he would answer in the 
words of the following resolution, which he had 
prepared, and proposed to offer at a future time: 

Resolved, Thai the Federal Government is the agent of 
the people of the several States composing the. Union; 
thai ii consists of three dteUnct departments— die legisla 
uvc. the executive, arid the judicial— each equally a part of 
the Government, and equally entitled to the confidence and 
j support of the States and the people; and that it is the duty 
of every patriot to sustain the several departments of the 

Govenuneal in the exercise <>!' all the constitutional pow- 
ers of eaeii which may be necessary and proper lor the 
preservation of the Government in it's principles ami in its 
vigor and Integrity, and to Btand by and dofend to the ut- 
nio-i the lag w iiieh represents the Government, the Union. 

anil the country. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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perniulTfg* 
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